Individuals together
By Eric Miller
web posted October 14, 2002
The concept of individualism is one that has long appealed to me.
If I said it didn't, it wouldn't matter much because if I didn't value
individualism, I couldn't very easily value individual opinion.
Individualism is long engrained in the American psyche, but still
we are confused about where to go to become or be an
individual. The colonists who arrived in the new world more
often that not were those who somehow didn't fit in with the
social structures of the old world. Settlers moving west into the
land acquired through the Louisiana Purchase and on to the
coast often did so with a desire for more freedom to do what
you want to do.
From the colonists to the Western settlers, these weren't as often
"individuals" as they were sects of people who wanted to deviate
together or make others deviate like them or with them. Those
who were individuals in the literal sense often likely found
confinement and social pressures from the small communities that
then dotted the plains and countryside.
Throughout the centuries and today, individualists have not
sought the countryside, the "Wild West," and more recently
country and suburbs. They have instead headed to the world's
cities, where they found the most freedom to do what they want
and become who they want to be. While many people today
may visualize a person living alone atop a mountain when they
think of an "individualist," the reality is it's hard to be an individual
alone.
It certainly makes sense. That mountain man growing vegetables
and hunting wild game doesn't have the time or opportunity to do
the things that really distinguish someone as an individual.
Likewise, the social pressures from a small community don't
often create the room necessary to become much different than
those around you.
Let's look at a few people certainly considered individualists and
get a glimpse of how much they did alone:
Take Frank Lloyd Wright. He designed houses for very
individual clients and more than expressed his personality in his
work. But he was usually within arm's reach of the Loop. His
clients were there, as were the necessary financiers, draftsmen,
and craftsman necessary to take his ideas and make them reality.
How about Thomas Jefferson? He occasionally lived away from
the city, but depended on countless people to help provide the
necessities he needed to be able to spend the time it takes to
start revolutions and found Republics--things he regularly
traveled to cities to do.
Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and Commodore Cornelius
Vanderbuilt certainly wouldn't have gotten very much done had
they stayed in the countryside. Steel needed scientists,
technicians, and countless workers before it could be turned into
rails and girders. More than just additional people, railroads and
steamboats needed places--cities to go to, to link together.
Writers and artists may have used both the cities and countryside
for inspiration, but unless the art is kept selfishly personal, only
the cities-- which contain the dealers, critics, publishers, and
patrons--could provide the markets and mechanisms necessary
to share their craft.
There are at any given time countless other individuals in a given
city. Besides the famous architects, lawyers, engineers,
politicians, and doctors heavy on personality, each bakery,
corner store, barbershop and tailor shop allows its proprietors to
express themselves in a very individual way.
But there's more to being an individual than just doing what you
want to do. Whether we're looking at dress and mannerisms or
the freedom to act outside of prescribed social and sexual
"norms,"--to deviate in many other ways from whatever the
people around you are doing--the deviations are most possible
and acceptable in an urban environment.
Of course large corporations in the world's financial districts
have thousands of workers who seem anything but individual.
For many white-collar workers, a small town environment can
offer freedom from this big business structure. But even here,
some of these workers who seem to have little chance to express
individuality in their repetitive, predictable tasks work their way
up through the ranks and often find new, creative, and more
efficient ways of doing things. If not while on the job, certainly off
the clock.
Isn't that true of a farmer?, you might ask. Yes, but not true for
someone who lives alone without benefiting from the labor and
creativity of other people, without the potential for free and
unforced exchange between diverse individuals. The farmer,
especially in this age of highly marketed techno-agriculture, relies
as much on the city as the city does on the farmer, and he
requires the efforts of countless city dwellers to let him
concentrate his efforts almost exclusively on productive farming.
Without the cooperation of individuals in a city, where such
cooperation is efficient and practical, most of our collective lives
would be mundane. There would be no time left to pursue
individual pursuits like philosophy, architecture, painting,
medicine, or business, to act strange, or, most importantly, to
think differently.
To be individuals in a true sense, it is only practical to be
individuals together.
"The concept of a 'right' pertains only to action--specifically, to
freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion,
coercion or interference by other men." Ayn Rand
"Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an
individualist is a man who says 'I will do as I please at everybody
else's expense.' An individualist is a man who recognizes the
inalienable individual rights of man--of his own and those of
others." Ayn Rand
Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist
(www.newcolonist.com).
Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com